Month: January 2023

This morning at 7am we hit an all time low temp for Alan and I since living in the Southwest. The thermometer showed minus 20. (The previous record for us was -18 in Bayfield back in 2003).

But in that odd New Mexico way, when I sit playing with the dogs on the south-facing front of the house at 10am, it’s 35 degrees and balmy, while on the north side it’s barely hitting +8 degrees and feels like the arctic.

In other news, this is the time of year Alan and I generally start planning a vacation. Most years we go somewhere in February, like many people, to get away from the drag of endless winter. While we love winter, we get as tired as anyone of the constant layering of coats and slogging through snow. (Strangely, not as tired as I get of salt and sand and bugs and humidity. I am not a person for the tropics, although I love the paucity of clothing.)

Last winter, we didn’t travel, enjoying being here at 4Fords so much we decided to tough it out. And were glad we did, as it was a marvelous season. But this year we have made plans to travel for a couple of months, and so are looking at maps and figuring out places to go.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love maps…paper maps. I have 2 crates of them upstairs. Mostly topographical Maps of various places we’ve backpacked, alphabetized by location. I keep an active account with http://www.MyTopo.com. While Apps such as OnX Hunt, Farout Guides (nee Guthooks), AllTrails, and GaiaGPS (and, of course, Google Maps) are wonderful and useful, and I carry a Garmin InReach GPS for safety, there’s nothing as satisfying as looking at the WHOLE picture that only a paper map gives you. And compasses are cool, too.

We are going to take Pippin (our 14′ camper) and a tent. The tent is for sleeping, as the bed in Pippin is too small for 2 adults and 2 dogs. We did it with Clair for 3 1/2 months, but we were packed in like sardines. Any anyway, we both like sleeping in a tent, as long as we have comfy pads and our new double quilt from Enlightened Equipment.

The plan is to leave around March 1 to check out Organ Pipe Nat’l Monument, and several places on the way, then go back to a favorite spot in the Tonto Nat’l Forest around Roosevelt Lake, where we are hoping for some serious backpacking with our granddaughter on the Arizona Trail. Next, we’ll head over to Texas (via Roswell, NM) to meet friends in Guadalupe Nat’l Park, then wind our way down to Big Bend Nat’l Park. After that, weather and whim will decide when we get home. We want to avoid the worst of the mud/snowmelt season here, but get home in time to start a garden.

What makes this trip a bit more interesting is that I am teaching 4 classes this semester, and need to have internet access at least 1-2/week. So that’s where our new Mobile Starlink setup will hopefully come in handy. Will our little solar array on Pippin be enough to power it? We’ll have a generator just in case.

That’s the plan, but, as many of you might know, Alan and I change plans frequently, so this first draft is just that. In the meantime, we dream and calculate driving distances and check out State Parks and Boondocking sites, and stay warm with gallons of tea and cocoa.

1: RENOVATE restore to a former better state (as by cleaning, repairing, or rebuilding).

2: REVIVE: to restore to life, vigor, or activity,

3: REJUVENATE: Suggesting the restoration of youthful vigor, powers, or appearance.

4: REFINEMENT: The improvement or clarification of something by the making of small changes.

5: RENDER: to cause someone or something to be in a particular state.

Merriam-Webster, 2023

That’s what we’re doing. All five at once. (Think that’s too many “Rs”? Check out the “8-Fold Path of the 4 Noble Truths”!)

I have no idea why the previous owners never finished the bathroom. They got busy with kids, jobs, or having too much fun I assume. Or they just didn’t care about privacy. The walls, made of homemade adobe bricks built from dirt taken out the arroyo, and glass bricks and a shelving unit make up about 1/2 of the walls. The adobe was to create a thermal mass/fire wall behind the original wood cookstove (wish it were still here!)

But, Alan and I, being older and maybe more private, want a bathroom that is actually it’s own space.

That said, finishing these walls was quite the process, as nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING, in this house is square.

(Of course, being square was always uncool in our book, so maybe that’s why we love it so much).

The doorway is neither square AND closes on an angle and there’s logs to work around.

The hanging is my first piece of weaving I did when I was 17 at Franconia College. I actually dyed these wools using natural ingredients. Everything else I wove at Franconia was burned in the house fire in 1979. It, too, is not square, nor even rectangular.

Above, Alan’s fitting in a trapezoid over the door. The center framed area will hold a stained glass window we found on Etsy.

Next, Alan turned to finishing the kitchen lights. One of the pendants arrived broken, so we had to wait for a replacement. Now, they are up.

Everything in the house, including the floor, posts and beams, was finished with linseed oil. It is harder to find these days, and the price has tripled since Covid…..but eventually, I will get to that chore.

Now, we are starting to look at the kitchen remodel. We probably won’t start til spring, as we’ll have to move the stove and sink out into the sunroom for the duration. The goal will be to get more counter space and closed cupboards, and look less “busy”.

Ultimately, you can see that this house will never look like a suburban home. In its own way, it is a work-of-art. It was hand-built using local materials with love and care by people who were mindful of their impact on the environment, with fitting a home into the landscape without overwhelming or harming it. The shell is solid and has stood 25 years of the harsh northern NM climate without damage. It is a working home, where projects and dreams happen. It is also our refuge and retreat.

Here are a few photos of recent tracks around our place. I’ve written before about my fascination with tracking. It was a stunning day yesterday, so I took a 3 hour hike around the canyon, checking out who else is hanging out.

Today, we took a walk at Valle Seco, a Forest Service area north of us and saw more tracks.

Alan and I have done a lot of driving recently; a week on the Front Range with family, trips to Durango and Pagosa, Las Vegas, NM, Albuquerque, and more. Big Red (below) is now in the shop, getting repaired following the hit-and-run a couple months ago that trashed the back quarter and rear bumper. It’ll be there for at least 2 weeks. So we are down to 1 vehicle, Alan’s work truck. The first big storm of the season is moving in tonight, and we hope to see at least a couple feet of white stuff from it. The plan is to lay low and get out the xc skis and snowshoes.

Just to add some variety, here’s some shots from our drive home from Fort Morgan, CO.

We haven’t done much work on the house recently. Too much driving, I guess. I’ve been busy prepping for the coming semester, which starts Monday. I’ll be teaching 4 classes online. Alan’s been working on adding lighting in the kitchen, which is wonderful. We continue to work with the water system: there’s 1000 gallons of rainwater in the cistern, and it’s not freezing much even when it’s minus 10 outside, so that’s great. Every 10 days or so I drop a pump into it and fill up the 65 gallon tank upstairs, which then gravity-feeds to the kitchen and bathroom sinks. The well provides water for doing laundry, but we still need to install the 3 large (120#) filters that will allow us to use it for washing and gardening. That’s a big job, and not one Alan really wants to tackle in cold weather.

The woodstove works fantastically and keeps the place cozy, and so we have been enjoying comfy evenings reading and watching TV shows like The Expanse and Wednesday. We don’t watch much television most of the year, but make up for it during these long nights!

Last night, instead of the 12″ of snow we were expecting, we got 1.5″ of rain. It poured all night. My neighbor texted me that she has never seen rain in January here in all her years (almost 70 of them). The snow line was about 300′ above us:

Bummer! Now, instead of sledding and xc skiing, we have a bumpy ice rink for miles. The pre-existing snow of about 6″ has shrunk to 2″. In addition, there’s been solid cloud cover for 8 days now, also a record. I get antsy after about 2. I’m like the solar array, I need a constant sunlight to keep my batteries charged. That said, the solar arrays have been doing ok (better than me!) throughout, meaning we’ve had plenty of power to keep the Christmas tree lit. And the new kitchen lights burning.

As I took this picture, grousing about the gray skies, the sun came out. It won’t last; there’s more weather coming, but it must have heard my whining!

Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful, healthy and adventurous 2023.